ATTEMPT TO FIRE HIS MAJESTY’S DOCKYARD AT PORTSMOUTH.
During the recess of parliament, the public mind was agitated by acts of incendiarism, which seemed at one time to denote that a conspiracy had been entered into for the destruction of both our shipping and our arsenals. In 1764, Choiseul, the French minister, had concocted a plan for such a fearful catastrophe, but having divulged it to Grimaldi, then prime minister of Spain, through him it was discovered to Lord Rochford, our ambassador at Madrid, and the scheme therefore failed. Ministers might have taken warning from this circumstance, and have had the dock-yards and arsenals watched with sufficient vigilance, as to prevent so disastrous an event from ever taking place. By this time, however, they had returned to their old confidence, and on the 7th of December, a fire broke out in the dock-yard at Portsmouth, which threatened its total destruction. It was got under by great exertions, and it passed at first for an accident, but on the 15th of January, one of the under-clerks of the dock-yard having occasion to move some hemp in the hemp-room, discovered a machine and combustible materials, which had evidently been placed there by the hands of an incendiary. Some weeks before, a sullen, silent man, a painter by trade, and who was known by the name of John the Painter, had been seen loitering about the yard, and he was now suspected to be the delinquent. Suspicion fastened still stronger upon him because he was known to have recently come from America, and a cry of alarm instantly spread through the country that American incendiaries had arrived in England, and would spread fire and destruction on every hand. It was necessary that John the Painter should be taken, and soon after he was identified at Odiam in Hampshire, where he had been apprehended for a burglary. John was brought up to London for examination, but he was so taciturn, and so wise in keeping his own counsels, that neither the privy-council, nor the lords of the admiralty, nor other officers who interrogated him, could elicit anything from him that would tend to his crimination. What authority, however, failed to perform, that craft brought about. On the suggestion of Earl Temple, another painter, who had been also in America, was put into the same ward with John, in order to circumvent and entrap him. Fellow-feeling caused the taciturn prisoner to open his mouth. His brother painter pretended to sympathise in his misfortunes, descanted largely on his travels in America, and professed principles similar to his own. The travelled painter did all this with such address, that he finally gathered from John that his real name was Aitken; that he had entered into many regiments from which he had deserted so soon as he had received the bounty-money; that he had traversed England through nearly all its parts, sometimes robbing on the highway, and sometimes filching and stealing in towns while he worked at his trade: that he went to America, where he commenced politician and reformer of abuses, and where he conceived the notion of serving the cause of liberty by burning our shipping and our principal trading cities and towns; that he then left America for France, where he had several interviews with Silas Deane, the agent of congress; that Silas Deane encouraged his project, by giving him money and promising him rewards commensurate with the service he should render the American cause; that he then procured a French passport and came over to Canterbury; and that on leaving Canterbury he proceeded to Portsmouth, where he began to compound and prepare his combustibles, after which he went into the dock-yard and made the attempt of which he was suspected. The manner in which this evidence was derived was certainly contrary to the spirit of the English law, and repugnant to the feeling and practice of the present day, but on this evidence vouched by the travelled painter, John the Painter was condemned and executed. There was no doubt left on any mind either as to the culprit’s guilt, or to his connexion with Silas Deane; but before his death he is said to have confessed to some naval officers, that most of what his accuser had testified against him, was true—that he had, indeed, applied to Deane, who had promised him a reward of great price when his work should be done. Nothing transpired which would inculpate Choiseul the French minister, but as he was still in office, and as his animus was well-known, he was thought to have been concerned in this plot likewise. But it failed; and the circumstance had the effect of still further exciting the enmity of the English people towards the Americans.